


Hadley

by emanuelaluisa34



Category: Selection OC7
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27262006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emanuelaluisa34/pseuds/emanuelaluisa34
Summary: This is a collection of Selection OC fics and rps from the Seventh Selection OC, following the character Hadley Jane Harper, a Five from Allens. I will add warnings as they apply per "chapter". I will also likely be going back and editing rps into fics as I go.
Kudos: 1





	Hadley

When I was a child, my mama used to tell my sister and I stories of the world as it used to be. Tales of times of old, before war and violence had ravaged and reshaped this world into what it now was flowed from her lips like a river, rushing towards us as we sipped on our hot chocolate, until they forked around my body, eroding away at me until all that was left was the words, and one single trickling stream of consciousness. They enveloped me, becoming my armor and shield against the harsh realities that awaited us beyond the little campfire Papa had started. They embraced me like a wooly blanket, keeping all of the crickets, cicadas, and the prickly grass from touching my skin. 

I would always remember those nights with vivid clarity. I remembered our family of four gathered around a fire so small it did little to keep us warm in the cool mountain air, the way my ice-cold fingers had felt against my arms as I wrapped my good jacket tighter around myself, the way my cheeks burned and flushed against the damp, evening chill. 

I could remember the days, too. As soon as I had turned ten, I had ridden only in the passenger seat of Papa’s faded red truck, the black leather of the seats softened and dulled through decades of wear and tear, the old engine causing the door to vibrate against my elbow as I rested my head in my hand on the early morning drive into town. The sun would just be starting to peak its wary head through the clouds, drenching the fields and rocks in vibrant hues of green and brown as we rolled past them, conducting the symphonies of the birds as they traced figure-eights in the skies above us while Papa finally pulled to a stop. He’d always climb out first. Then me. Then Paisley, four years my younger. Papa would always hum and tap his fingers along to some imaginary song emanating from the truck radio that no longer functioned as he grabbed his paints and easel from the back row and locked the car, motioning to my sister and I to begin the trek to Main Street, where he’d set up his easel and offer to paint caricatures for tourists who I now know couldn’t care less. 

“Papa,” I asked on one of the slower days, my voice uncharacteristically high and soft as I tucked a few strands of hair too short to make it into my ponytail behind my ears. I was ten years old, and Paisley was six, her childish mind distracted by the butterflies flitting between the flowers in the field behind us.

Despite the meager amount of change in his money box, that day, he met my eyes with a wide smile. “What is it, Hadley Jane?”

“How come we do this every day?” I sat down in the dry afternoon grass, picking at it as I crossed my legs under me. “At school, Mrs. Miller told me that Harpers Ferry was no place for Fives, because there’s no work for us here. How come we haven’t moved to a big city, where you could make enough money to be happy, and I could dance for an actual ballet studio?” I was close to outgrowing the barre Mama had set up on the back porch, and there was only so much technique she could teach me, before I would have to study under a professional to get anywhere in the dance world. Even at the unripe age of ten, I was aware of that. 

“Harpers Ferry is our home, Hadley Jane.” His smile concealed something deeper, the lines in his forehead further etching themselves into his skin right before my eyes, even as he nudged me playfully with his foot. “It’s even in our last name.” 

_ Harper. _

My surname was all I have left of them, now.

I could remember my last night in Harpers Ferry, as well. 29 August, 2111. The smell of cooking meat had filled my nostrils the moment I had stepped out of Papa’s truck, guiding me towards the front porch even as I closed my eyes, only to open them again as Paisley shoved by me, her mousy brown braids flying behind her like dry autumn leaves blowing in the wind. 

“Hey!” I yelled, breaking into a run just to keep up, to beat her out for the laurels of being the first one to the front door, the first one at the dinner table, the first one to lay a hand on one of the warm, buttery biscuits I was sure Mama had baked fresh that night to celebrate. 

In two days, I’d be off on the train to DC, bound for my first semester of classes at a real ballet academy. The Kirov, as it was referred to by its students. This was bigger than the splintered barre on our back deck, bigger than the flat shoes with the worn out soles that prohibited me from going en pointe like I’d seen some of the most talented girls my age do in YouTube videos, watched in secrecy in stolen moments on the computers in the school library. The city seemed to call my name every time I looked at the brochure, beckoning to me in my dreams, as if I would simply grow wings and fly myself to the brick building in the Northwest of the city that would be my home for the next seven years, as I learned and trained alongside other Fives with the same goals and aspirations as me. Work hard. Successfully audition for a professional company. Become the best. It was clear cut, the path laid out like my life was a board game, and I just had to make it to point B before everybody else to win. 

Paisley and I barreled through the front door, almost knocking each other down as we came to a screeching halt in the doorway, frozen at the sight of Mama shaking her head at us. Paisley was eight, all innocent, gap-toothed smiles, braided hair, and freckles. She might as well have had a halo hanging over her head, the way she happily skipped off without a care in the world nor a weight on her shoulder, Mama not even sparing her so much as a second glance as she did. I was eleven, going on twelve in November, though, and supposedly the responsible older sister, who shouldn’t have placed her younger sister in harm’s way for a useless bit of competition. 

Even so, there was the ghost of a smile on my mama’s face as she shook her head at me, her green eyes crinkling around the edges. “You’re a pain, Hadley Jane.” 

I grinned right back, tugging off the old, worn, too-small, brown leather boots that I had been wearing almost every day for years now, tossing them haphazardly towards the coat closet. It was our usual call and response, our daily ritual whenever I returned home in the evening. She called, and I responded. “Only for you, Betty Lou!”

I also remembered the smoke that had filled my lungs later that night, that had pulled tears from my eyes even before I was even fully awake. I remembered the heat of the fire as it came nearer, singing everything in its path quicker than I had ever thought possible. 

I remembered leaping over the edge of my bed faster than I had ever moved before, the heat of the flames dragging droplets of sweat down my back, the panic coursing through my veins like a flood and the ringing in my own ears drowning out all other noise until I couldn’t hear even my own thoughts. I could remember my frail arms straining to open the old window, the interior of the glass running and foggy for as long as I had lived in our home, and I could remember how it wouldn’t budge. I had been just as stubborn as that window was stationary, though. Seven stitches in my hand in the emergency room, that night, from the glass that had shattered as my fist made contact. That window was the first and only thing I had ever punched.

I didn’t know that the rest of my family hadn’t gotten out until after the hospital staff was done with my hand. Then came the social worker, her smile just as overly saccharine as all the upper caste women I had met before in Harpers Ferry. The fire had supposedly been started by a candle that had been left lit during the night, and must have been knocked over by the wind. I knew that that was impossible, though. The window hadn’t been open. That was why I needed stitches in the first place. 

The only candle we ever left lit was the one by my bedside, to ward off the monsters under my bed. 

I must not have remembered to extinguish it in my excitement about the day to come.

I did remember the names of the family I had lost, though, repeating them like a prayer in my head as the social worker guided me towards the train that would take me to the Kirov, where arrangements had been made for me to live year round. 

_ Mason Elijah Harper. Betty Lou Harper. Paisley Sophia Harper.  _

And me. The lone survivor, the lone wolf. The black sheep, the black swan, my dark past hanging over my head like a cloud tethered to me by an invisible string. 

_ Hadley Jane Harper. _

_ Charity case. Scholarship kid.  _

_ “You’re a pain, Hadley Jane!”  _

_ Hadley Jane Harper. _

  * ♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬



Silence, save for the soft notes of the violin trickling through my earbuds like rain down a window pane. The streets of the city were always empty early in the morning. There were no cars to splash me with the remnants of last night’s storm as they flew by, and no people to brush past me as they scurried off to their jobs. It was just me, the red brick sidewalks beneath my feet, my bag bouncing against my right hip with each step I took, and the score of Prokofiev’s ballet, “Cinderella,” playing on my phone. This was how most mornings were in the early autumn in DC. It was far too early for the university students to be awake and headed to class. The sun hadn’t even greeted the gridded streets, or stopped the crickets’ humming in the humid air. If any student was awake, they were likely indoors, studying. Or at least, that’s what I’d assume.

I’d graduated from the Kirov at seventeen years old when I accepted a position in the Allens Ballet’s corps de ballet. Schooling that involved ledgers and maths and essays was all something of the past to me, a long forgotten memory tinged with faded rays of sun and the sound of laughter over a crackling campfire. My schooling since I had left the rubble and ruins of that wooden colonial style house in Harpers Ferry had consisted only of topics that our headmistress had felt would serve us well as professionals in the world of dance - dance history, theatre history, Russian, French, music theory, piano, violin, nutrition, and of course, near endless instruction in ballet. The main focus, of course, had always been the dancing, corrections drilled into us before and after our academic lessons, left to reverberate through our heads throughout the day and in our sleep as if our skulls consisted only of empty space, no brain to be found. Back straight. Butt in. Toes pointed. Eyes ahead. Shoulders down. Each command was punctuated with a slap from Mistress Natasha’s ruler, the severity of the wound inflicted entirely dependent on how many times she had given you the same correction.

I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, though. Ballet had become my life and entire reason for living, each note of the music and each step in a variation lifting my very soul higher until it was caught in my throat, leaving me at a loss for words when the music finally ended and I stopped dancing, my only movement the rise and fall of my chest as I struggled to catch my breath. 

It was a far cry from a perfect life, though, and all of the other faces in the studio as I entered would concur with me on that. Flocks of girls mingled in the hallway, slapping their pointe shoes against chairs, the floor, or the wall, the sound drowning out whatever tidbits of gossip they were attempting to share with each other. That was likely for the better, I knew, noting how their voices dropped in volume to hushed whispers as I walked past, like a wave pulling away from the shore. Whispers were still audible, if you listened closely enough.  _ Black sheep. Charity case. Easy A.  _ The nicknames had evolved as we’d all gotten older, twisting around me like a whirling tornado of insults, but leaving me with my own suit of armor. It was jealousy. It had to be. Being labelled as the Kirov charity case had left me with few friends since there was little for anyone to gain from my friendship, and a lot of time to myself to practice and improve and repeat all of the corrections given to me by our instructors, both aloud and in my head until the words sounded fake to my ears and lost all meaning. I was invited to join the corps de ballet of the Allens Ballet a year early, when I was seventeen, and was promoted to the position of featured soloist when I was nineteen. If these girls were to be believed, it was only because I must have slept with the company manager, Igor, and not because I had put in more hours of training than them each week since we had all been twelve years old, giving up even my summers to go to training intensives in other provinces, and once even in Russia. No, that clearly had had no impact on the quality and technique of my dancing, of course.

I was fine being on my own, though. I wasn’t a migratory bird, chattering nonsense into the wind from the tops of trees or power lines, in need of a flock to survive. I looked out for myself and kept my guard up, knowing that if I let it slip for even just one second, everything I had worked for could be tossed out the window like it was nothing more than the ashes from a cigarette. Ballet wasn’t something to be played around with, like a ball or a doll or a toy. I had not survived a decade of grueling classes, verbal onslaughts from women three times my age and four times as loud as me, and danced through multiple injuries while I prayed that my body would just hold itself together for one more performance, all to have everything I had worked for slip through my fingers like grains of sand because I felt like I needed to fit in. I wasn’t meant to fit in. I was born to stand out. That was what made me a star on the stage. 

“Good morning.” The words were little more than a mumble as I approached my usual spot against the wall, dropping my black duffle bag at my feet and lowering myself to the ground, ignoring the way that the motion sent tiny bolts of lightning flaring through my hip. It wasn’t anything more than a labral tear or snapping hip syndrome, I was sure. Dancer’s hip, we had nicknamed it, the pain so common that it seemed to spread through our ranks like a bad virus. I refused to let it be anything more than a minor nuisance. Actually listening to the pain would mean sitting out or taking time off, which was something I quite literally could not afford to do. Dancers who didn’t dance didn’t get paid, and dancing was all I knew how to do, all I had ever wanted to do. I should have at least another eight years before my body finally caved under the pressure and collapsed out from under me, leaving me baseless and my life meaningless, my world shifting from bright color to a bleak black and white. Then I could use up the remaining crumbs of my salary to drink myself into oblivion on all the five dollar wine from Trader Joe’s that my money could buy. 

“‘Morning,” came Evgeny’s usual reply from where he sat on the ground in front of his own red duffle bag, leaning his torso forwards over his legs as he stretched them out. 

Evgeny Lebezheninov was quite possibly the only person I had ever met who truly understood my outlook on life. It was an unspoken connection, as if we could simply read each other’s minds like picture books made for toddlers. Like me, Kirov had been his home once he had enrolled there. His parents had divorced when he was a young kid, and his mother, an Illéan by birth, had opted to move back to her home country and bring her two sons with her. Somewhere along the journey to a newer and better life she had gone off the rails, losing herself in drinks and drugs and men until she became fully unhinged, leaving Evgeny essentially responsible for the care of his younger brother, Ivan. The moment Evgeny had been offered a spot in the corps de ballet, five years before me, he had accepted and immediately moved into the apartments provided for us by the Allens Ballet, taking Ivan with him. They hadn’t seen their mom since then, which should have been positive, would have been positive, had it not been for the fact that Ivan had been diagnosed with leukemia, and therefore, the disappearance of their mom left Evgeny as the sole care provider for Ivan, and subsequently the person stuck with the insanely high medical bills. 

That was the real reason I couldn’t afford to lose my position. Evgeny and Ivan had become my family, and as such, I had made it very clear that I’d be shouldering the burden of the medical bills as well, not matter how many times Evgeny attempted to shut me down, as if my desire to help the people I cared about was simply a light switch that could be flicked off. Evgeny was kind, with a smile that could melt the snow mounds leftover from the winter in March, and eyes that sparkled like the surface of the open ocean. The world had broken him ten times over and each time he had put himself back together again with twine laced with diamonds and gold. I had known him since he was seventeen and I was almost twelve, and even now, him twenty-seven and me just shy of twenty-two, I still couldn’t figure out how he managed to stand so tall while shouldering the knowledge of his eighteen-year-old brother’s health problems, and the costs that came with them, and the nagging worry that in the end none of his sacrifices could have been worth it. We didn’t talk about that, though. He was insistent that Ivan would be completely fine, eventually. I was never so confident. The treatments we could pay for weren’t the state of the art treatments that he really needed, the ones that had the highest success rates. We were gambling with this poor teenager’s life, and we both knew it, but like two addicts high on the thrill of uncertainty, we couldn’t stop. We didn’t have a choice. Both of them deserved so much better.

“We’re working on the pas de deux today.” He finally looked up at me before he leaned back and began searching for something in his duffle bag blindly, his hand bouncing up and down until it found its target. 

I knew what that meant. A lot of our practice hours today were going to be spent with Evgeny lifting me in the air, him playing the role of the prince, and me playing the role of Cinderella. A true rags to riches story. It was almost kind of ironic, I realized, as I began to stretch out my own feet, back, and legs, feeling the muscles pop and release as I leaned forwards and buried my face in my knees, the chalky smell of the old wooden studio floor hitting me like a fly baseball straight to the face. The story mirrored our life in a manner so eerily perfect that sometimes I felt like I was Narcissus staring at my own reflection as I danced, completely entranced by the idea that my life, too, might have a happy ending. That was unlikely. Evgeny and I both sure had the rags, and the riches would definitely come in handy, but with an evil step family consisting of the caste system, an absolute monarchy, and the apathy of those that did have the riches, I was doubtful that our fairy godmother would ever dare make contact with us. 

Those facts in and of themselves were partly why it was not at all surprising to me that Evgeny and I had become fast friends when I had arrived at the Kirov, despite the five years of age between us. We were both self-unmade and self-made, having been given nothing by the world and yet still having everything we had stripped away from us by forces beyond our control. We had thrown ourselves into dance, letting the music and the movement of our bodies consume us, drawn to the lights of the stage like a moth to a flame. Evgeny had recognized the fact that we were two sides of the same coin after about a month of me having been at the Kirov, and had promptly taken me under his wing, sharing tips and tricks and advice on which summer intensives were the best to apply to, what to write to get out teachers to give me higher marks on school assignments, and pointers on my technique while dancing. He had played a big part in molding me into what I was. I was still the sculptor of my own life - that was a role I’d never give up to anybody else - but Evgeny had been the person who had provided me the clay for my craft. It had never bothered me that he was five years older than me, or that Ivan was four years younger than me. They were still my closest friends, and family. It helped that Evgeny and I were often paired together for pas de deux pieces. We were often lauded for our deep connection, which could be seen even all the way in the back rows and the balconies of the audience. Everytime we were told that, it took all my willpower to bite my tongue and retort that that must be because we had both made it to where we were despite the obstacles in our way with little to no help from those around us, not thanks to the supposed help of our instructors or our assigned social workers. My words were like fire on my tongue, sharp and harsh like the shards of glass the doctors had pulled from my hands ten years ago, and I had to prevent them from shattering around the few people that deigned to talk to me, that tolerated my presence off the stage. There was no denying that I belonged there, under the bright lights. That was my home. Off the stage, however, I was a wanderer, an Odysseus traversing the seas of life for the past decade, unable to find where I was supposed to be outside of my ship.

This particular pas de deux was one of my favorites that we had ever been assigned together. The earthy tones of the brass and low strings felt like a tether binding me to Evgeny, who’s hands rarely left my waist as we danced. He lifted me and spun me, essentially acting as my own personal barre made human, while I paid attention to my lines. I was en pointe on my left leg almost the entire time. I’d have to roll out my left calf tonight once I returned to my apartment for sure, to make sure it wasn’t too sore to prevent me from repeating the same steps the following day, and the day after that, and every day until we were preparing for a new performance - likely the nutcracker, which we did every holiday season - and every day until I was in my thirties and my legs could no longer support me at all. The day that I needed surgery in order to keep dancing would be the day that I retired, and the day that I finally lost myself for good. 

With a sigh, I began the process of putting on my pointe shoes. I always used an old pair for practices, dead and worn beyond belief, and in no way fit for the performance stage by any stretch of the imagination. The amount of times I had sewn the lining of the shoes back together and singed the end of the ties with a cigarette lighter to keep them from fraying was a number so high it resided in the clouds, and I likely wouldn’t even know how to count to it. We all went through pointe shoes like Twos went through the latest fashion trends - we were lucky if we got them to last a season. The astronomical cost of pointe shoes didn’t help, either. Luckily for us soloists, our company was kind enough to cover the costs of shoes and costuming, lest we look anything less than perfect on the day of a performance. We never got to actually keep anything we wore on stage, of course, unless we bought it, which none of us could really afford to do. Half of our job was to perform and make the dancing, which broke all of our bodies down until they crumbled like dry dirt, appear as if it was effortless, as if we had simply popped out of the womb doing grand jetes and pirouettes. The other half of our job was to fool the wealthy Twos and Threes in the audience into thinking that our life was glamorous, that we wanted for nothing, and wore items as luxurious as our costumes all the time, all so they could leave the theatre later and tell their friends about how there is clearly no economic hardship faced by the Fives and other lower castes. How could there be, when we wore such shimmering garments on stage, and painted our faces with such broad smiles? The upper castes could feel good about the rigged economic structures of Illéa, which they benefited from, and sleep soundly, content in the fact that Illéa truly did believe in the equality of opportunity for all. 

That was my least favorite part of my job. 

At the sound of the door closing shut, we all scurried off to the barre, all eyes fixed on Mistress Maria as she murmured something into the pianist’s ear. I didn’t dare look away, even as I took up my usual place at the barre, right behind Evgeny, the calluses on my palms lining up with the splintered places in the wood perfectly, as they had for years now. Within moments, all of my thoughts ceased to exist and the notes of the piano took over, instructing my body on how to move through our usual warmups, and once that was over, how to move through the entire practice. My body was on autopilot, responding to Mistress Maria’s corrections before my mind had even processed them. I was aware of what I was doing, of how Evgeny’s hands felt on my waist and how my hip protested whenever I turned, but those sensations weren’t important. They weren’t real enough to ground me in reality as the music took over, consuming all parts of me and clouding all of my thoughts like a heavy morning fog, until all I could glean was the fact that the music and I both existed in the same plane of reality, alone save for each other.

I only came back to reality once the music had stopped. The change was always so abrupt and harsh, like waking up in a hospital after a surgery under the harsh LED lights as the anesthesia was beginning to wear off. Even if the last notes died in a gentle decrescendo, it still felt like I had been dragged out of a dream by a nagging alarm, but I was never ready for the dream to end. I wanted to be the character I was portraying for a little longer, even if I couldn’t necessarily ever relate to them. I wasn’t Giselle, dying of heartbreak because of my lover; I wasn’t Kitri, longing after forbidden love; I wasn’t Juliet, ready to spurn all I had and run off with my Romeo; and I certainly wasn’t Cinderella, in need of a prince to drag me out of the deep waters of life that I was drowning in and give me a life jacket made of gold and jewels. Still, it was nice to play pretend, even if only for a few hours, to imagine that I had a life better than my own, a life where I wasn’t responsible for providing myself and two other people with food and other necessities with my own meager salary, and then giving everything else I had to them for medical bills. It was nice to pretend that true love could be real, and that I had never had to resort to sleeping with men and women for the release of endorphins that made me feel like I was truly alive for once, and for the extra money I stood to gain from it. What a world could exist within the four walls of my own imagination!

Evgeny cleared his throat and dropped his hands from my waist, rubbing them briefly on his tights. “Walk with me?” he asked as he looked up at me again, his brows slightly furrowed in questioning, as if he was afraid I would say no.

Were I a more emotive person, I would have scoffed at his hesitation. “Of course,” I replied with a nod, quickly padding over to my duffle to remove the pointe shoes from my feet. “The usual route, around the Kennedy Center?” 

The Kennedy Center was the main theatre that our company performed at, located right on the waterfront of the Potomac River, overlooking the wealthier DC neighborhoods of Georgetown and Rosslyn, a hair's breadth away from Foggy Bottom and West End. The walkway around the back was one of my favorite places in the entire city. I always snuck out there in between performances when we had multiple shows in one night, leaning over the railing of the balcony, my fingers brushing over the tops of the hedges as I looked at the boats on the river below, at the people who rowed and paddled past, so wrapped up in their own lives and problems that they likely didn’t even noticed the bejeweled ballerina studying them from up above. The bubbling of the fountains and the rustling of the willow trees as the wind blew was one of my absolute favorite sounds, second only to that of the music of the orchestra itself, filling me with a sense of absolute peace that I couldn’t find anywhere else. Even the architecture of the building itself - the taller than life golden columns supporting the overhang of the building’s ceiling - made me feel so small and insignificant in the best way possible, like a reminder that even if I fucked up and ruined my performance and thus my career, the world would still spin on, and my life and mistakes would make little to no impact on it. It was quite humbling, in my opinion. 

Evgeny nodded and zipped up his bag beside me, looking down at me as I finished up doing the same. Another reason we made good pas de deux partners was just the way that both of us were built. He was taller, around six feet, and all lean muscle, while I was half a foot shorter than him, and while I was not quite as scrawny as I had been on the day that I had arrived at the Kirov, I was still very lean, as I needed to be in order for our instructors to allow the male dancers to lift me. It wasn’t necessarily the healthiest outlook on weight and self image, nobody with more than two brain cells would ever venture to argue that ballet left you with a positive outlook on your body, but it was rather simply just a fact of life. Plus, maintaining a lower weight required less food, which meant that I could spend less money on food, and instead put that money towards other, arguably more important causes. It was a complicated dynamic, for sure, but I had grown used to it, at this point. Everything was complicated. C’est la vie.

I rose to my feet wordlessly and unzipped one of the side compartments of my duffle bag, where I had put an envelope containing the money I had managed to make the previous night. That was yet another aspect of my life that was not glamorous. Sex was enjoyable, yes. I lived for the adrenaline rush and the high that came with it, and the feeling of euphoria I was left with once the endorphins kicked in, and the fact that some people were willing to pay me handsomely for only one night of my time was quite helpful, but at the same time, the fact that I had to go to such lengths to get the money needed for Ivan’s medical bills was a thorn in my side, burrowing itself deeper under my skin each time I thought back to my actions the morning after. It wasn’t that I resented Ivan for being sick - he couldn’t control that - it was that I resented the caste system, for not allowing us to get higher paying jobs, just because of the families we were born into, which we also had no control over.

Plus, there was the same look on Evgeny’s face each time that I handed him a nondescript envelope filled with cash. He was always such an open book, even if he didn’t mean to be, his thoughts and feelings scrawled all over his face like his skin was scrap paper and his mind was the hand of an author with innumerable ideas for the plot of his next novel. Disappointment, evident in the wrinkles on his forehead. Frustration, told by the clench of his jaw. I knew what words were coming before he could even move his lips to speak. 

“Take it,” I insisted and placed the enveloped squarely in his hands, the small slap that echoed from the motion barely a whisper compared to the cacophony of the hustle and bustle of the other dancers around us as we all attempted to leave the studio, eager to finally relax back in our own apartments, or somebody else’s apartment. 

“Hadley.” My name was a sigh on his tongue, floating along with the breeze of his exhale, drifting off towards the unending oblivion where all useless words found their final resting place. 

I shook my head as we made our way outside, the sunlight warming the bare skin of my arms, soothing the hairs that had come to stand on end in the air conditioned studio until they all lay flat against my skin once more. “Don’t even start. Yes, I know I’m technically breaking a rule. Yes, I know you’ve told me that I don’t have to do this.” I turned around to face him, walking backwards as I did, not even looking to see if there was a possibility that I’d bump into someone. “I still think that Ivan’s health comes before anything else I’d be concerned with. So, take the money, or you’re only going to add to my own stress.” 

He sighed once more, looking down at the envelope and running his thumb over the thickest part, in the middle, where the money was stacked, as if he could glean how much I had sold my soul for with just the fingertip of his thumb. After a moment, he pocketed it and gave me a quick nod that I knew was a gesture of thanks. It had been clear to me from the moment that I had first met Evgeny that he cared for his brother more than anything else in this world, which I found very admirable. I could only hope that I would have been the same way towards Paisley. I was left with only hope, because I hadn’t stopped to even consider if she was alright before I had jumped out of my own bedroom window ten years earlier, almost to the day. 

If an afterlife truly did exist, I often wondered if my family would be proud of me now. Would they think that what I was doing was foolish and brash and reckless, like they had so often cautioned me not to be, or would they be proud of me for taking action to help my friends in any way that I could? Would they be amazed at my persistence, to dance through pain and injuries to achieve my dream, or would they berate me for putting my body and mind through hell for a dream that would only last until I was thirty, if I was lucky? Was it possible that they were looking down on me and guiding me towards a more stable career path for after my body finally failed me? Standing under the high ceilings of the Kennedy Center, walking alongside my reflection in the tall glass windows, peering at the red carpeted interior of the building illuminated only by a few gold chandeliers, it wasn’t hard to imagine that there could be something up there looking down on us, our forms little more than ants on a giant, round anthill of a planet. If there was a God, or a divine power of any sort, though, why would he let the ills of society fester like they were currently? Why were we stuck in an economically rigid society, with little to no social mobility, where I had to sell my body just to help pay medical bills for a disease that was only curable for the wealthy? In what train of thought was that fair or logical? In what train of thought was it the right decision to let two parents and an eight-year-old girl die in a house fire that shouldn’t have even happened in the first place? It genuinely hurt my head to think about it. 

“You’ll never guess what I heard this morning, on the news.” Evgeny looked back at me over his shoulder as we made our way across the street.

The tip of my shoe caught on the curb, sending my stumbling forward, my hip screaming out at the motion. All the Twos and Threes in this city, and yet they couldn’t afford to repave the goddamn roads? I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out, forcing myself upright and lengthening my stride to catch up with Evgeny. “What?”

“Apparently, Prince Damian just announced that he will be holding a selection to find his wife, and the next Queen of Illéa.” 

I raised my eyebrows and blinked a couple of times, looking at his face for any sign of a reaction. I knew hardly anything about the royal family of Iléa beyond what I had heard in passing when I walked by a TV that had the news on. Prince Damian was about two years older than me, if I was recalling the information correctly, and an arrogant asshat, based on what I had seen on the media. He had loved to party when he was in university. Typical of people who had wads of money and didn’t have to worry about blowing it all on expensive drugs and other forms of debauchery. Very classy. 

“Well, I pity the poor lady that ends up winning.” I snorted and rolled my eyes, knowing full well that the winner would likely be some politician's daughter, because that’s just how things like the Selection worked. They were always rigged in the favor of the rich, the higher castes, and the well connected. There were no free handouts for those who were actually in need of them, and tons of gifts for those who already had everything. Yet, everyone in this country was likely about to drop everything either to enter in the Selection, or to watch and place their bets on which military-brat Two who was fluent in five languages and handed out canned tuna to homeless Eights through the windows of her maserati was going to win the heart of the prince this time. Some people in this country had far too much free time on their hands. 

“Yeah, I guess dating in university didn’t work out for him.” Evgeny’s words were accompanied by a shrug, the gesture entirely too casual and nonchalant for the forced easy tone of his words. 

I matched his shrug with one of my own, though the emotion behind mine felt more genuine to me. “We all know it’s going to turn into a catfight between a bunch of Twos, anyway. They’ll tell interviewers how shocking it is to have to actually work for something for the first time in their lives, and everyone will praise them for being so strong and persistent.” By now, we had reached the doors of our apartment building, and I held it open for Evgeny. Once he was inside, I followed, walking up the miniature flight of stairs to the elevators, both painted the brightest and most offensive shade of mustard yellow I could even fathom existing. I was willing to bet the few pennies that I had to my name that they hadn’t been updated since the 1980s, with the way they creaked and groaned like lifting even a teacup yorkie from the ground floor to the next was a feat of monumental strength. 

“I just don’t get why we have to waste our tax dollars on a media pageant, when they could be going into something like subsidized health care.” Without even looking, I knew how deep of a frown now graced Evgeny’s face as he nodded in agreement with my words.

It was true and we both knew it. Illéa needed so much more than a Selection. Illéa needed economic reform, social reform, and political reform. The end of the caste system, for starters, was much needed, though I’d never dare to voice that thought aloud in public. Subsidized health care was also high on the list of necessary reforms, along with socialized university education and a complete restructuring of the foster care system. A transition to a more constitutional monarchy with a representative legislative body would also be ideal. I was just a ballerina, though, who researched these topics in the few minutes of time that I had to myself whenever I waited for my laundry to finish up. What did I possibly know about fixing an entire country? 

The elevator came to a stop on the fourth floor and Evgeny took a step forward, covering the sliding door’s sensor with his hand and looking back at me over his shoulder. “You coming?”

I shook my head, grabbing the strap of my bag a little tighter, feeling my knuckles turn white. “I’ve got to put my laundry on, but I’ll head to your apartment after I do that.” I also wanted to put on something a bit more comfortable. Sweat pants and an old t-shirt sounded nice, right about now, accompanied by a cheap bottle of Syrah. 

Evgeny only nodded once before darting off in the direction of his own apartment, leaving me to stare at the changing floor number display as I waited impatiently for the elevator to heave its way up to the ninth floor. My apartment wasn’t anything special. It was a studio, with enough room for a twin sized bed pushed up against the windows, a loveseat and a small coffee table, a galley kitchen, and a bathroom with a shower small enough to make me wonder if the men who lived in the same building could even stand up straight without bumping into anything. The water pressure sucked, and the heat never worked, but it was home, and it was mine. Everything was okay once the smell of the maple oatmeal I made for breakfast and the instant coffee container that I had accidentally left open hit my nose. 

I dropped my bag by the sofa and slammed the door behind me, then emptied the contents of my bag into my laundry bin and began playing some music on my phone as I undertook the search for my bottle of detergent. Where that resided depended entirely upon how tired I had been the last time that I had done the laundry. It could be on the top shelf of my closet, where it really belonged, or on the floor next to my bed. For someone who’s life was so regimented and organized, my apartment sure was a mess. I supposed that tight of a level of control had to slip somewhere, though. 

The elevator ride back down to the laundry room felt twice as long as the one up to my apartment. Our ballet company paid for our apartments, which was definitely nice, considering that most companies that I knew of did no such thing, but they didn’t cover our laundry. No, if you didn’t want to smell like sweat, you had to pay $4.40 to wash and dry your clothes, and as a group of people working out for hours on end each day of the week, we went through clothing pretty quickly. All of us were constantly doing laundry. It was essentially our social hour. So, I wasn’t shocked when I walked into a bustling laundry room, words about the prince’s upcoming Selection being thrown around with varying degrees of excitement, audible over even the pop music blasting in my ears. 

“Drop it, Paige,” I heard a girl in the corps sneer from a washer the row behind me, “As if anybody here even has a chance at getting picked.”

“Why not?” Paige was one of my favorite new members of the corps. At the age of nineteen, she’d be just barely eligible to enter into the Selection. She was a sweet girl, brimming with talent, enthusiasm, and love for ballet. Somehow, the world hadn’t broken her yet. It was a fact that I couldn’t help but smile at.

In this instance, as much as I was loath to admit it, I had to agree with the girl in the corps whose voice had reached my ears first, the sound like nails scraping against a chalkboard. “It’s really just a big popularity contest, Paige, and we’re at a disadvantage because of our caste and income.” 

I finished loading the washer and hit start, spinning on the ball of my right foot to see the full picture of the girls behind me talking. Paige sat atop a washer, her legs crossed under her, looking down at the other girl in the corps, whose name I didn’t care to learn, since with her attitude, she was never going to work her way up to a better position in the company. Behind them, Mistress Maria made her way through the door of the laundry room. My spine straightened the moment that I saw her, acting on an instinct so deeply ingrained within me at this point that I hardly even registered that my posture had changed. 

I knew I wasn’t the only one who had a reaction to her presence as a hush fell over the room, everyone looking up from what they were doing to see what she was doing down here. While she lived in the same building as us, it was incredibly rare for us to see her out and about in the hallways or public spaces. It was like spotting a bald eagle in the forest. It basically didn’t happen.

Mistress Maria sighed, scanning the crowd of people in front of her. “Oh, by all, means, continue your conversations on the Selection.”

“What are your thoughts on it, Mistress?” Paige batted her eyes a few times, playing with the ends of her wheat-blonde hair as she looked over at the Mistress. It was a good question, I had to admit, and I admired her bravery in asking. There was a very high probability of her being reprimanded for doing just that. 

She looked around the room again until her eyes settled on me, as if she was attempting to have a private conversation with me across the crowd of other dancers, the gesture intimate enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck and make me want to squirm where I stood before any words even left her mouth. “I think that all of you who are eligible, and received the application in the mail, should register. There’s good money to be had, if you get selected, and it’s good publicity for the ballet company.”

I had honestly forgotten about the monetary aspect of it, but that wasn’t the only factor to consider, no matter how nice it would be to be paid more than I made now, and how enticing the possibility of having high quality clothes, meals, and lodging catered for me and paid for by someone else was. “But if we get selected, we’d never be able to dance again. Anyone who’s selected automatically becomes a Three, if they’re not already a Two or Three.”

A snort sounded from somewhere to my side. “What, are you planning on really fucking your way to the top now, Hadley?” The girl who had been talking to Paige earlier was now raising an eyebrow at me, her comment eliciting a couple of giggles from some other girls in the laundry room.

I lowered my shoulders back and crossed my arms, raising my chin ever so slightly to look down my nose at her. The answer was no, and I knew for a fact that that much was obvious to everyone in that laundry room, despite the snide comments they muttered while green-faced with jealousy. All I had ever wanted to do was dance. The thought of losing that just to bat my eyes at a prince who wouldn’t give me the time of day filled me with disgust, revulsion the likes of which I had never felt coursing through my veins before. It felt intrinsically wrong. 

“You asked for my opinion, and I gave it.” The Mistress’s tone was cold, and it was clear that this conversation was finished before it even started. “I expect that you all know that the turning in of your applications is absolutely not to interfere with your rehearsals.”

As everyone nodded, I made myself scarce, a deer darting off into the woods at the sound of a gunshot, my mind moving even faster than my legs. It was selfish of me to choose the happiness I found in dance over the money I could potentially send to Evgeny and Ivan for Ivan’s medical bills if I was selected. I knew that, and yet, something about the entire process still felt wrong. I didn’t want the prince. He seemed like the epitome of a douchebag. I couldn’t stand the way the royalty lived, the appearance of the lavish parties they threw, the money they spent without sparing a single thought for the consequences of their actions. Entering into the selection would be the most hypocritical thing I had ever done, if I chose to do it. 

Yet, if it meant that Ivan would have access to better medical treatment, and that the burden of the bills would be lifted off of Evgeny’s shoulders, I would do it. 

That was what I realized as I found myself in front of my mailbox, pulling out a large envelope, fancier than anything I had ever seen before, practically embroidered in gold. I barely even had to skim the letter to know what it said. I held it tight to my chest, as if I was attempting to keep it hidden, or dry from the rains of other people’s opinions and comments, as I called for the elevator, counting down the seconds like that would make the elevator come faster. 

I inhaled, holding the breath for a few seconds, then exhaled, slowing the speed at which I’d been scrolling through my thoughts until I was calm and could think rationally. I’d fill out the form, at the very least. I’d feel guilty if I didn’t. It wasn’t like there was really any chance that I’d be selected, anyway. I had no qualities that would make me a particularly appealing candidate. On the off chance I did get selected, at least I’d be doing something important, even if it did mean throwing away my career and everything I had spent the past ten years working for. 

My feet padded lightly against the carpeted floor, following the all too familiar path down the hall to Evgeny’s apartment. Like me, he had a studio, though his was a little bigger. More often than not, I ended up spending the night on his couch, allowing Ivan to have my bed since it was infinitely more comfortable than the pullout couch he called his bed. He needed a real bed more than I did, anyways. 

I didn’t even have to knock as I entered, just slipping through the door silently like water running over an open surface. Evgeny was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands as he looked at a stack of papers on the coffee table in front of him, white as snow against the dark wood. Just besides that sat the stack of money I had given him earlier, crisp and green and utterly untouched, from the looks of it. 

I walked over on the balls of my feet, avoiding the floorboards that I knew from years of experience creaked and moaned like they had the plague, making myself little more than a whisper of the breeze as I peered over Evgeny’s shoulder like Tinkerbell looking at what Peter Pan was doing. They were bills, of course. I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Papa had once told me when I was a child that the only certain things in life were taxes and death. He hadn’t known how right he’d been. 

“It’s not enough.” It was a statement of fact rather than a question. I could barely hear my own voice over the rattling of the radiator, which practically coughed with it’s pitiful attempts to regulate the temperature of the apartment, and the pounding of my own heart, thumping steadily in my chest as I became even more sure of the decision I had come to. The letter slipped out of my hand and onto the back of the couch, an elevated position for the grand opportunity we had really needed all along.

“No.” Evgeny’s voice cracked and he ran his hands through his hair before looking up at me, golden curls losing their sunshine, and blue eyes rimmed with red.

I sat down beside him and threw my arms around him, closing my eyes and taking in the feeling of the way the muscles of his back moved as he shifted to face me, burying his head on my shoulder seconds before his body began to shake every so slightly, like a small dog scared of heights after being picked up. Inside of myself, it felt like my own chest was straining to keep itself together, a ship caught in a whirlpool, like the tears trickling out of Evgeny’s eyes were a river attempting to carve a canyon through my heart, watching him hurt like this. This man was ready to give up everything for his brother, and I had been selfish enough to consider not helping him, because I had been too afraid for my own future. My future had always been uncertain. Evgeny and Ivan’s didn’t have to be. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally whispered, his voice shaky as he pushed away, immediately casting his gaze back downwards to the papers. He was a prisoner to those goddamned bills, shackled by them, Atlas forced to carry the weight of the world on his back for eternity. 

“You don’t have to be.” I followed his gaze, wishing I could burn those papers with nothing but my stare. “Where’s Ivan?”

“Your apartment, sleeping.” Evgeny frowned, looking back at me. “Your shirt.”

I looked down, not even having registered the puddle shaped tear stain that now sat atop my shoulder. “It’s fine. It’s just water.”

Evgeny was already up, though, crossing the room in only a couple of steps, and coming back with a maroon sweatshirt, which he tossed in my direction like I was a laundry basket and the sweatshirt desperately needed a wash. I unfolded it, first, taking in the Russian logo on the front, and then the fuzzy material inside, my fingertips savoring the soft feel before I shrugged the sweatshirt over my head. “Thanks.”

“It’s the least I could do.” He shrugged once more, his gaze falling on the papers once more.

This was my moment, the breath after the peak crescendo of the music, the last pirouette in the variation before the music came to a stop, and reality came crashing back in. “There’s more I could do for you.”

His brows immediately furrowed, like a warning to me to tread lightly. “Like what?”

A breath in between two dances, before the music of the next variation started. “I’m going to apply for the selection.”

“Why?” The question hung in the air like a heavy cloud, blotting out any light there had been during the course of this conversation. “Hadley, that’s the stupidest thing to ever leave your mouth. You’re a dancer, and you hate the monarchy. And how would you registering for that shitshow possibly help me?”

The music was picking up again, taking the form of a darker tune this time. I had come in as the white swan, and was slowly transforming into the black swan as this conversation continued on. My words were slow and cautious, like children emerging from a hiding spot to face an angry parent, clearly guilty, but not wanting to fight, laying their stones and slingshots at their feet. “There’s money in it. Money, that if I defy the odds and am somehow selected, I would give to you to pay those bills.” 

“Hadley, no.” He shook his head. “Ivan is my brother, and my responsibility. No, I won’t accept. I won’t let you do this to yourself.” 

My blood began to boil, the black swan feathers poked their ugly heads through my skin. “You and Ivan are the closest thing I have to family, so it’s my responsibility too.” I stood up, the back of my neck burning as shards of glass continued to fly off my tongue, my voice growing louder as the music continued to crescendo and the tempo picked up pace. “I’m not about to lose either of you, especially not if there’s something I can do about it.” 

“So it’s okay for us to lose you, but not for you to lose us?” His voice rose as well, a perfect mirror of my own. Two sides of the same coin, indeed. “You know what that is, Hadley? It’s selfish.”

“No, selfish would be me putting my career in front of the medical needs of someone I care about!” Two steps backwards as we were approaching the summit of the crescendo, walls of sound crashing in around me like waves during a storm. My fingers, obscured by the sleeve of Evgeny’s sweatshirt, far too long for my own arm, fumbled for the envelope, where it sat atop the couch, and then for the doorknob. 

“Where are you going?” He probably hadn’t meant it to sound angry, just caught in the heat of the moment, but his words set my face in a mask of ice, raising a wall around my heart and mind along with it. It was always like this when we argued. Evgeny saw the girl underneath the mask I wore more often than anybody else in this world, but in moments like this, he was no better than anybody else I knew. So, I’d show him the side of me that I put on for the world - the cold, emotionless, guarded prima ballerina with a heart of stone. That was the role I played in the performance of life, and I accepted it. I hadn’t signed up for it, but it had landed in my lap the day everything I had ever had had burned, turning my old script to ash. I was a phoenix, reborn by the flames, but I was too smart to die again. I had been too smart to get attached. 

Until I had met Evgeny and Ivan, and cracked open the gates to my heart just a smidge, to let a new family in. Look where that had gotten me, though. I wasn’t burning yet, but I might as well be.

“Back to my room. I’m not arguing about this. I’ve made up my mind.” Fingertips made contact with cold metal, sliding across it, not quite able to get a grip. “Ivan can have my bed. I’ll sleep on the loveseat.” 

Evgeny sighed. “Right, because that will do wonders for your hip. Do you think I don’t see that, by the way? Do you think I don’t know that you won’t take time off or see a doctor because you give every penny you have to us?”

“Then I should just quit while I’m ahead.” I waved the envelope through the air to punctuate my words, surprising even myself with the lack of warmth in my voice. Maybe I should have gone into figure skating instead of dance. I was already apparently a queen of ice with a heart of stone, after all, unable to get closer to the fire, for fear that I would melt. It was better this way. I was insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe. It was better than people didn’t want to care about me. 

“Hadley, that’s not what I meant,” he sighed, but I was already out the door. After a quick pit stop in the laundry room to move my clothes from the washer to the dryer, I headed back to my own room, ready to fill the application out. If I left early enough in the morning, I could hit the post office before rehearsal, and before the line was around the block. It was still a long shot. I was basically guaranteed to not be selected, once everything was said and done, but I had to at least try. For Ivan. For Evgeny, even if he was upset right now. 

I entered my own apartment the same way I had entered Evegny’s, quiet as a mouse as I closed the door behind me, keeping my eyes fixed on the doorknob as if even their movements ran the risk of waking up Ivan. 

“Well, looks like you two had a good evening.” 

The sound of Ivan’s voice sliced through the air like a knife, landing right between my shoulderblades, reverberating down my spine one vertebrae at a time until I was paralyzed in place, unable to even turn and face the eighteen-year-old boy who was apparently, actually awake. 

“What makes you say that?” Slowly, like my entire body was underwater, I was able to turn around and take in the sight of the smirking blonde boy sitting on my sofa, his finger hovering over the pause-play button on the tv remote, his profile lit up by the image of the two detectives on the screen. 

“You’re wearing his sweatshirt.” He wiggled his eyebrows, the beginnings of a grin playing on his lips.

I looked down, like I had to double-check that he was right, as if I had forgotten the words his brother and I had hurled at each other only moments prior. “Oh,” I replied, then glanced back at him. “I just needed to talk to him about something, but he needs some space right now.” 

He pulled the knife out of my back, only to stab me again, in the chest this time, as his face fell the moment the words left my mouth. “Was it about me?” 

“No,” I answered immediately, my eyes going wide as I took a few steps towards the couch, taking a seat next to him and waving the envelope through the air a bit, flashing him a conspiratorial grin, as if I was genuinely excited about the topic at hand. “No, no, It was actually about this.” As I spoke, I finally opened the envelope, reaching up above my head with my other hand to turn on the light switch, and then looking back at Ivan again. “Selection application,” I explained, and put the application down on the coffee table as I stood up to go find a pen, every movement awkward and frantic, not like the graceful ballerina I had spent the majority of my life being at all. 

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that.” He was eyeing the application skeptically, tearing it apart with only his eyes, analyzing everything from the material of the paper to the diction of the letter, as if it held the answers he actually wanted from me. 

“I think it’s kind of like voting is, in other countries,” I lied, my words rushing out of me like sparks flying off a campfire. “It’s a civic duty.” 

“I don’t think it’s your civic duty to apply to date the prince,” he replied, the skepticism evident in his voice, “but if you want to apply, I say go for it.” 

I smiled at him again, reaching over to fluff his hair as I retook my seat on the sofa beside him, my eyes flicking up to the television briefly, seeking any distraction or diversion from this conversation. “What are we watching?”

“X-Files,” he answered immediately, launching into an in-depth explanation of what had happened so far in the show, describing everything with a level of detail characteristic of novelists, a level only true artists could even dream to reach. At first glance, it was almost impossible to tell that Ivan was even sick, especially at moments like this, when he had more energy than a firecracker on Independence Day. He was clearly a little paler than most people, and seemed to bruise more easily, but both of those symptoms could easily be explained by other factors. He could have had very pale parents, or perhaps a severe case of anemia. Only those very close to him would really see the other symptoms - the frequent nosebleeds, the joint pain, the headaches, and the swollen lymph nodes - or the side effects of his treatments. That was likely for the better, though. He deserved as normal of a childhood as he could possibly get, now. 

I nodded along as I began filling out the form, interjecting into the conversation with questions whenever I thought of them, or whenever it seemed like Ivan was pausing to catch his breath. The first few questions on the form were incredibly easy, seeing as they were for the most part superficial. Name, age, caste, contact information, height and weight, and hair and eye color were all questions I could answer in my sleep. It was after that that I began to have to pause and think about my responses. What languages did I speak? English, of course, and we had been taught French and Russian at the Kirov, though we had never taken any sort of fluency test. I had done a summer intensive in Moscow one year, though, so I felt confident in my Russian abilities, at the very least. What was the highest grade level I had completed? That gave me pause, but after a few seconds, I decided to write a full explanation, so nobody could say that I’d lied about my education.  _ I began my education in public school in Harpers Ferry, Allens, and completed my schooling there through elementary school. Then I transferred to the Kirov Ballet Academy in DC, Allens, and continued my education there until I was seventeen years old, when I graduated, a year before most pupils do.  _

What were some special skills I possessed? I tapped the pen against my lip, as if by making contact with part of my mouth, it would siphon the words from my brain, and magically transfer them to the paper. I could dance, obviously. I knew how to play the piano and the violin, though I was by no means a master at either. I could sew, thanks to having to modify my own pointe shoes before each use. Beyond that, I was at a loss, so I assumed that that meant that those were my only skills. It wasn’t like it really mattered much, anyway. It was almost guaranteed that my application would be thrown out the moment whoever was reading it saw that I was a Five. 

So I sealed the envelope, raising my eyebrows at Ivan, hunched over next to me as he stared intently at the TV. “It’s getting kind of late, Ivan, and I’m going to be getting up earlier than usual tomorrow to drop this off.” 

He nodded, flicking the power button on the remote and then rising to his feet, a mountain towering above me despite his young age. Once he was off to bed, I went and retrieved my laundry from the dryer, and then collapsed back onto the couch, only for my alarm to wake me up far too early. It was a necessary evil, though. For Ivan. For Evgeny. For them, I dragged myself through my usual morning routine, my body lagging behind my mind, and my mind tugging my body forward, the two locked in a never ending cycle of yin and yang until my body finally began to metabolize the caffeine I had just consumed. Oatmeal. Coffee. Brush teeth. Put hair up. Get dressed. Pack bag. Earbuds in. Get going!

The post office wasn’t too far out of my way, and I managed to time my arrival perfectly with their opening. Once I explained what I was there for, a clerk ushered me inside, towards a camera. The world seemed to stop spinning for a moment as I realized what was happening. They were going to take a picture. They were going to judge my appearance based on a picture of me with bags under my eyes and no makeup, taken before the sun had even risen in the morning. It wasn’t fair. 

Life wasn’t fair, though. Life had never been fair, and yet I’d still overcome the odds, and risen to my feet after being cut down by more adversaries than there were stars in the sky. I couldn’t give up yet. I just needed to let my natural beauty shine through, if I possessed such a thing. Critics often said I did, though I tended to take their words with a grain of salt, since they knew me only as well as any random stranger I passed on the streets did. 

I let my mind wander back to the times in my life that I had truly been called beautiful, the sound of cicadas droning in the warm summer sun filling my mind with such clarity that were it not for the cool material of the chair beneath me, I would have thought that I had actually travelled back in time. “Beautiful,” Papa cheered, beaming as I showed off the rond de jambe Mama had been working on with me that past week. I was so proud of mastering such a simple technique, but even knowing how easy what I had just done was, Papa still made me feel like I had mastered something incredible. 

The memory didn’t quite bring a smile to my face, though. It tasted bittersweet, like pink lemonade after a day spent in the sun. My lips were closed, upturned, but narrow and tense - it wasn’t really a smile.

That didn’t stop the photographer from taking the picture. The moment the flash went off, initially blinding me and then making me see stars, I knew it was all over before it had even begun. I had blown it. Flashing cameras surrounding me and my name in a star on the pavement would never be a reality. 

At least Evgeny wouldn’t have to worry about me leaving. 

  * ♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬



Weeks went by with essentially radio silence. The most I heard about the selection was from my peers when they talked about their applications, or how they wished they could apply, but could not. Even Paige had shown up to rehearsal with a full face of makeup one day, taking five minutes to frantically scrub it off before one of our instructors saw and called her a whore. 

Evgeny and I avoided the topic at all costs. Our instructors berated us for losing our usual connection, our spark, our chemistry on the stage, but beyond that, so long as we avoided any mention of the selection, we got along fine. I had taken to placing any money I had earned on the side in an envelope, and leaving that on the coffee table in his apartment, to avoid having to speak to him about it.

It wasn’t until we were leaving practice, after hours of being berated for not being connected enough to each other, my body aching from my neck down to each tip of my toes, that Evgeny decided to bring it up again. “You know they announce the selected on the Report tonight, right?”

“Oh, good,” I mumbled, tossing my pointe shoes in my bag and rustling blindly in search of my water bottle, “so, this was the last rehearsal we’ll be yelled at for losing our spark.”

“Or tomorrow will be the first day I have to relearn our usual roles in The Nutcracker with a new partner, and hope that it will be half as good as it is with you.” He sighed and shifted his duffle bag on his shoulders, though his eyes were still fixed on me. I could feel them, two lasers boring holes in the back of my neck as I drank down my last few remaining sips of water. 

“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing they won’t give my application a second glance.” I rose, shouldering my own duffle bag and crossing my arms, looking up at Evgeny, but raising my chin ever so slightly to look at him down my nose. He had the physical height advantage, that was undeniable, but my personality was twice as tall as him, casting a shadow to keep him from the burning rays of the sun, so real and yet so intangible that he probably didn’t even notice it existed, or what it was doing for him. 

He only sighed, opening up the studio door for me to walk through and then taking a few quick steps after me, weaving through the writhing sea of bodies that always flooded the corridor. “And if you do get chosen? You leave some big shoes to fill, Hadley.”

“And I’m sure there’s plenty of girls eager to fill them.” I didn’t even dare to glance over my shoulder at him. I had thought our time spent arguing was past, naught but a little dot on the dark ink blot of life. 

The sound of his footsteps stopped as we reached the street, their absence somehow louder than their presence had been. “There’s a reason you got promoted before any of them did.”

“Yeah, haven’t you heard?” I whirled around, pulling an envelope out of the side pocket of my duffle and tossing it at him, forcing him to lunge for it before it was swallowed by the slush and dirt that lined the sidewalks like decorative icing. “I’m good at fucking my way to the top.” 

His gaze settled on the envelope, for once entirely unreadable. He was still an open book, but it was if the words written all over his face were now in a foreign language, drawn in a different alphabet that I had no key to decipher. “They’re holding a public viewing of the Report in the community room. Everyone’s expected to be there.” 

I wondered if he could read the sarcasm written all over the tight, closed lipped smile I flashed him. It was so difficult for me to get a read on him these past few weeks, despite having done it successfully for years, like all of the sudden my best friend had turned into a foreigner or an alien wearing the skin of someone I had used to know. “I look forward to seeing everyone gush over some Olympic equestrian named Katie from Allens when she gets selected.” 

We walked the rest of the way home in silence, my strides lengthening every time I felt his presence behind me, like he was a spectre haunting me as I just tried to live my life. I couldn’t wrap my own head around how he could be so bull-headedly stubborn to not realize that I was doing this for him. It was my turn to carry the majority of the burden, for once, and even then, that was only if I got selected. The chances of that were truly so slim, I couldn’t even fathom why he was worried. 

The thoughts still plagued me, a swarm of locusts buzzing around my head with all the intensity of a lion’s roar as I opened my apartment door and immediately tossed my duffle bag onto the floor, and my keys on top of my bag. I wanted to scream, but the noise was trapped inside of me, a melody I couldn’t bring myself to sing as I walked towards my mirror, my nails scratching at my scalp and freeing some of my shorter strands of hair from the tight bun they were usually confined in. It wasn’t worth it to bother getting dressed up for the Report tonight. It wasn’t worth getting changed to watch either one of Evgeny and Ivan’s last hopes get crushed, or to watch my friendship with Evgeny crumble under the weight of my desire to help the last two people I had in this world. Evgeny was undoubtedly carrying a burden on his shoulders, but I could see now that he was no Atlas. He was Tantalus, bearing the weight of his brother uphill, but never reaching the top. I was Atlas, holding the weight of my love up above everyone else in the world, struggling to keep it from crushing them, and me as well. 

That was the main difference between Evgeny and I. That, and the way in which he stoically accepted his burden, while I fought against mine tooth and nail. To open oneself up was to open the door for weakness, and to open the door for love was to open the door for loss. If I was a cat with nine lives, then I’d already used up four by the time I was thirteen, because every time someone I cared about left me, part of me died alongside them, a phantom damned to weep at their gravesite for all eternity. I was running out of lives to lose. That’s what I got for choosing a profession that I’d hit my peak in in my early twenties, and even then, my body was already beginning to disagree with that statistic, rebelling against all logic and reason like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. My body was a tool, to be disciplined and instructed as my mind saw fit, and recently, my body needed to stop being a little bitch and learn its place. 

The elevator was packed as I made my way to the common room, weaving through the tide of bodies like we were all threads of a tapestry, and I needed to move in a separate stitch to make the pattern, until I spotted Evgeny. Ivan was nowhere to be seen, but that was to be expected. Immunocompromised individuals and large crowds packed like sardines didn’t tend to mix well. 

I stopped at Evgeny’s side, though I refused to look at him as I crossed my arms and shifted my weight from one leg to the other. I had apparently made it just in time to watch the blathering that the Report always began with, except this week, it was even more grating than usual. Did the royal family get a sneak peak at any of the girls that were about to be announced as the selected? I knew that logically they must have, because someone would have had to sort through the stacks of applications to find the most politically well connected girls, the richest girls, and the girls that would preserve their image as the quintessential, perfect, all-Illéan royal family. Even still, the royals hid behind bashful smiles and half truths, claiming to have seen some of the girls, and to be so excited for the prince, that he was so fortunate to be on the brink of meeting such a wonderfully diverse and talented group of young ladies. I had to cover my laugh as a cough as the conversation dragged further and further on, down a long pier with no end in sight. Diverse? Did they have a Three amongst the pool of Twos? It was funnier than any joke I had heard in the past few months. At least Allens was up first. I’d soon be put out of my misery, and made aware of whose future was being destroyed tonight - mine, or Ivan’s. 

“It’s so stupid,” I muttered, my words an ice pick across the glacier that separated me and Evgeny, drawing my torso closer to him. “Just get on with it.”

I could imagine the frown on his face without even looking. “You know that could be your life soon, right?” 

I peeked at him out of the corner of my eyes, watching his hair catch in the light as he shook his head before covering up my glance as an eye roll. “It’s not, but even if that becomes my life, your life gets infinitely better, so I don’t see what you have to complain about.” 

A hush fell over the room then, saving me from having to humor his response. In just a few minutes, he could stop fretting about the horrors of needing a new dance partner after Cinderella, and we could move on with our lives as if nothing had happened. It was all just water under the bridge, flowing out to see with every other argument we had ever had. 

“From Allens.”

My heart was a drum in my ears, a steady beat that guided my feet across the stage, through one motion after the other, a call to battle that my entire body heeded without second thought. The static of the TV was the orchestra, guiding the movement of my arms through the air, from first position, to fifth. It was the black swan variation, the thirty-two fouettes sucking me in like a tornado, bringing the world around me in and out of focus. This was my swan song, my dying dance. This was the last thing I would remember before I watched the curtain fall like a velvet sunset. 

“Hadley Harper, Five.”

It was the end of the dance. My lungs were burning as the world stopped spinning around me, the snap back to reality as the music faded jarring as the world came into focus once more, revealing that all eyes were on me, as they should be when I was the principal dancer. My lines were long and flawless, stretched to oblivion as a murmur shifted through the crowd. Had I forgotten something? Were my fouettes less than perfect? Was it my makeup? My costume?

No, I had stopped the dance too early. I hadn’t finished, but I had fallen. My career was over.

There was no ambulance coming to prolong my pain, though. There was only Evgeny’s words echoing from where he stood by my side, like my head was filled with empty space instead of a brain. “You’ve really gone and done it now, Hadley. Congratulations.” 

  * ♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬



The next few weeks blurred together, one after the other. At nights we were performing Cinderella, and in the mornings, our headmistress was berating Evgeny for receiving negative reviews from critics for the first time in his career. “Selected Hadley Harper is as beautiful of a dancer as she looks on screen. Imagine what she could do with a competent partner,” she’d read, her eyes and Evgeny’s bearing into me from both sides, pulling at me like I was a rope and they were two kids playing tug-of-war. During the few breaks I had in the days, I was meeting with palace officials to go over the logistics of being one of the selected. There was only one thing I cared about, though.

“The paychecks,” I said one day, cutting off the palace official mid sentence. It had to have been clear that I wasn’t listening, anyway, my eyes rimmed with the smudged remnants of last night’s eyeliner and a large black coffee on the table in front of me blurring in my line of sight. “How do we receive them?”

“They’re deposited into your account automatically,” he stated with a frown on his face.

“And if I gave you the routing number of another account, could you deposit them there, automatically?” I knew there was no way that Evgeny was going to accept checks from me, no matter how much I protested and insisted. We hadn’t said more than five words to each other in the past week, and everything we had said had been solely about our performance. I had had to find a way to make sure he got the money without him being cognizant of it. Of course he’d notice once he checked his bank account, but at that point, it would be too late for him to do anything about it. So I had gotten the routing number of his bank account from Ivan one night while Evgeny was out doing laundry, and I had committed it to memory, and lied through my teeth to Ivan that I was simply looking for a phone number of a colleague that I had given to Evgeny a few weeks back. Was I a slimy person for doing all of that? Absolutely, but I was about to enter a world of slimy politicians anyway. I was simply teaching myself how to be like them and best them, in order to survive. I was even getting good at lying to myself like that.

The official nodded and shuffled through his papers before thrusting one across the table in my direction with a level of haste that made it clear that he was as fed up with me as I was with him. “Yes, I would just need you to fill out this form.”

I gladly obliged, scrawling down the numbers that I had committed to memory like they were the answer to a test question I had spent hours studying for, and then shoved the paper back at the official. He simply nodded. That string of numbers that meant more than any mountain of jewels or any promises of love the prince could give me to me meant less than a speck of dust on the floor to him. What a blessed existence that must have been, to never have to worry about choosing between paying for food or paying for medicine, or to have enough leftover money to pay for luxury goods that were yours for more than one night. 

That was about to be my life now, though, as a Three. Evgeny reminded me of that the night before I left, barging into my apartment like a wrecking ball released from the highest point it could go. I jumped when he entered, sure that I must resemble a startled cat in that moment, which struck me as odd. I had never reacted to Evgeny’s presence like that before. I knew he and Ivan had keys to my apartment - I had given them those very keys. Yet, he hadn’t sought me out outside of the studio since I’d been selected, which was also odd. He was as much of a part of my daily routine as my morning coffee was. 

I cleared my throat. “Hey.”

He didn’t even look at me as he spoke, his eyes focused on the duffle bag on my couch. The palace officials had informed us to pack light because we would receive the majority of our new belongings once we got to the palace, but I still wanted to take some of my own clothes and momentos with me, no matter how grungy and cheap they were. I was not about to ask a member of the palace staff for a new leotard to practice in.

“You’re really doing it.” His mouth was pressed into a thin, straight line, his eyes boring holes into my bag as if he had x-ray vision, their intensity holding steady as he finally looked up and met my gaze. His eyes were shards of ice, cold and calculating and sharp enough to penetrate through everything I was. “You’re really leaving. You’re not going to draw out.” He shook his head and began pacing the length of my apartment, all the while running his fingers through his hair. 

I swallowed the lump I couldn’t keep from forming in my throat, no matter how much I focused on his movements or on keeping my expression and tone neutral. “Why would I do that?” 

He stopped then, and spun on the ball of his foot to look at me. “What are you even going to do as a Three? You’re a dancer, Hadley - and a great one, at that - and now what? You’ve just thrown that all away. You can’t be a dancer as a Three. So what are you going to do?”

I couldn’t help but sigh. “We’ve already had this conversation. So if that’s all you came here to tell me, let’s just fast forward to the part where you’re about to leave.” Evgeny and I had had our fair amount of exchanges of sharp words with each other, but my voice cut through the air like a recently sharpened knife, hitting its target before anyone even had time to move.

I could glean that much from the resentment shining on his face. “I’m not the one that’s leaving. You are.”

Something in me broke, then, snapping and crumbling faster than I could glue it all back together, faster than I could glue myself back together. “It’s all for you, you dumbass! I’m doing this for you! Can’t you see that?” I had never heard my voice this loud, this shrill. The words ripped against my vocal chords, tearing them red and raw like I’d been screaming for hours, my voice hoarse already even though I’d barely said half a dozen sentences in the past hour. 

My body went on autopilot and I picked up a maroon sweatshirt from my small pile of clothes, folded and freshly washed and as soft as a hug to the touch. 

I hurled it at him.

“Just take your stupid fucking sweatshirt, and get out! I don’t want to hear it!”

He didn’t move, a tree standing up straight in the face of storm-force winds. The sweatshirt landed at his feet, and the most he did was nudge it back towards my duffle bag before he took a few long strides back to the door of my apartment. He spared me one last glance over his shoulder. “Keep the sweatshirt. Your grey one has a hole in it.” 

That was the last time we spoke, the last time we even made eye contact before leaving. We had been Cinderella and the Prince, our chemistry on stage unmatched. The way we understood each other, could predict each other’s movements before we had even had the time to form a thought or realization - it was like coming home after a long vacation, except now I was a wanderer once more, cast out to sea, destined to be a modern Odysseus, left to navigate the currents and storms and monsters of the world for the next ten years without my family by my side. I wasn’t prepared for this trek. I couldn’t do this alone. Yet, part of me leaned into the terror, embracing it, letting it consume me until I was nothing but thoughts and feelings let loose, unbound, free to roam out of the locked cage I’d kept them in for years.

I’d signed and sealed my fate in a gold-embroidered envelope months ago. It was time to face the music, and accept the consequences.

I was Hadley Jane Harper, Kirov alum,  _ former  _ Five,  _ former  _ featured soloist at the Allens ballet.

I was Hadley Jane Harper, Three, Selected. 

I was Hadley Jane Harper.

And nothing was going to change that.

  
  



End file.
